1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for locating and retrieving a submerged item, and more particularly to reusable water-activated bobber release device for releasing the bobber when the device is exposed to water. The reusable device advantageously minimizes the number of moving parts to allow for quick, easy resetting of the device.
2. Related Art
Existing water-activated bobber release devices are used for releasing a bobber when items, such as fishing rods, rifles or other items become submerged. Traditionally, these devices hold a bobber in place by, in essence, applying a shearing force to a small section of a dissolvable tablet, such that the tablet is under a constant, compressing shear force that seeks to rip the tablet apart at the point of contact. The devices hold the bobber in place by directly opposing the force of the spring by placing the tablet in the way of the bobber's release. This method of operation, however, is prone to inadvertent bobber release, as the tablet breaks down to the constant force and moisture in the ambient atmosphere without the device having been submerged in water. In other words, these devices tend to deploy when the fisherman least wants it to do so, i.e., when the fisherman is reeling in an aggressive fish, while the rod is being transported in a vehicle or when the rod is in storage. The devices that rely on this bobber retention method fail to protect against inadvertent release in the manner used by the present invention, as the present invention instead redirects and redistributes the axial force in a radially outward direction. Additionally, in the prior art devices, the point of contact between the tablet and the opposing structure are necessarily formed of dissimilar materials, with the tablet being formed of salt and the opposing structure being formed from plastic, metal or some other non-dissolving material. Whenever there is a concentrated stress or tension between dissimilar metals, there is the likelihood of increased corrosion and strain which could cause the salt tablet to weaken prematurely. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to avoid concentrations of tension between dissimilar materials.
Other devices that use alternate retention methods, such as salt bobbins, suffer from other serious flaws. These devices utilize a multitude of moving parts positioned deep within their devices, which introduce at least two fatal flaws to those devices. One, moving parts such as internal, rotating metal line reels are subject to rusting when exposed to water. Should enough rust accumulate, the reel stops rotating and does not released any bobber line when submerged. In other words, actual exposure to water prevents the other “water-activated” devices from actually working.
The other fatal flaw is that these deeply-positioned parts, like the internal reel, prevent the fisherman from resetting the device for continued use, short of completely disassembling the device housing. These devices are neither designed nor intended to be resettable and reusable, but are instead intended to be used but a single time. In other words, these devices are different from present invention and teach away from the various aspects of the present invention described below.
Other “non-bobber” devices exist that utilize a salt bobbin to activate some feature(s). For example, some automatically-inflating rafts and jackets use a salt bobbin in their respective automatic inflators to activate when exposed to water. In these examples, a plunger with a piercing needle is held in place by a salt bobbin. When the bobbin is exposed to water, the bobbin expands and releases the plunger, which in turn punctures a compressed gas container to inflate the device. As will be apparent below, these devices are distinctly different in form and function from the present invention.
There remains the need for a reusable water-activated bobber release device which uses a bobbin, minimizes the moving parts and allows a user to quickly reset the device to its ready configuration without any need to disassemble the device housing. Further, it is advantageous to arrange the features in the device in such a manner that the bobber deployment force does not act as a concentrated axial vector that runs directly through the dissolvable tablet and instead is distributed as radial vectors that diverge outwardly from the longitudinal axis through the entire circumference of the dissolvable tablet contained within a bobbin assembly.